8 Great Northwest Swimming Holes

Our guide to close-in swimming holes doles out details on where to get wet, whether you’re a family of four looking for calm waters (and close-by restrooms) or an adventurous couple seeking a secluded spot to soak up the sun.

Whether the “flat” in Alder Flat refers to the 40-foot-long stone and sand beach or the quality of the blue-green Clackamas River stretching slowly around a bend, we don’t know. What’s more certain is that you’ll rarely have to share. Thanks to a ¾-mile hike to the water’s edge, only the adventurous frequent this idyllic swimming spot. (Fitting, since there is a slight but very manageable current.) Fir, ferns, and alder trees line the lush riverbanks, where just a few swim strokes away a trio of basalt boulders beckons from the middle of the river, gently, insistently, singing their siren song: Cannon-ball!

MAKE IT A WEEKEND

Turn this swimming hole into star-gazing ground by packing in a tent. Camping is permitted here, but there’s no potable water or toilets.

Pristine Buck Lake sits 70 miles from downtown Portland—15 of them corkscrewing Forest Service roads. But the crucial last half-mile is what keeps this stream-fed swimming hole relatively secluded and unspoiled: it’s traversable only by foot. Hike through gorgeous stands of old-growth fir, serenaded by a chorus of croaking frogs and willow flycatchers to the edge of the lake’s spectacular emerald waters—waters so clear you’ll be able to see every rock and log (and sometimes fish) beneath the placid surface. A rocky section to the left of where the trail meets the lake offers the best perch for the day—besides a raft in the middle of the lake, of course.

PACK IT

To discover more hidden gems like Buck Lake, get your hands on a copy of the out-of-print Oregon Swimming Holes. It might cost you $60, but it’s worth it.

One of the Northwest’s greatest ecological controversies—the fight for and against the endangered species listing of the spotted owl—detonated here in the 1990s, with conservationists eventually triumphing over timber interests. But the establishment of the near 23,000-acre Opal Creek Wilderness Area in 1996 preserved more than just habitat for our feathered friends. It also protected one of Oregon’s most scenic swimming holes—a 25-foot-deep turquoise pool at the base of a frothy Opal Creek torrent. There’s only one path into these breath-stealing jewel-hued waters, though: a 3.5-mile hike down an old rocky logging road and a final leap of faith from a 25-foot cliff.

MAKE IT A WEEKEND

The cabins at Jawbone Flats—an old mining camp less than a half mile from the pool—sleep between 2 and 16. From $195; meals start at an additional $10 per meal

Portland summers are short; make the memories last all year with Plywerk. The five-year-old Portland company prints and mounts your best shoreline snapshots onto bamboo frames for as little as $18. Upload that awesome Instagram shot of pops or your BFF falling out of his inner tube and—bam!—instant wall art to warm you all year through.

RUMORS THAT GHOSTS haunt Forest Grove’s Henry Hagg Lake have plagued me since I was a kid growing up in Washington County. The apparitions are purportedly the ticked-off residents of a cemetery buried under 53,640 acre-feet of water when the federal government dammed Scoggins Creek to create Hagg Lake in the mid-’70s.

I heard the refrain repeated throughout my teens and 20s, though, so I finally decided to look it up.

The Federal Bureau of Reclamation Pacific Northwest headquarters in Boise holds the bulk of the records relating to Hagg Lake. Archaeologists there unearthed two reports relating to the area: a 1965 archaeological survey of the Scoggins Valley and a 1956 orthoquad map. Both show farmland. Neither show a town.

So, unless a metropolis suddenly sprung up in the few years between the survey and the damming of the creek, little more than a few farmhouses and farm roads likely existed when the water descended on Skoggins Valley. No cemetery. No ghosts.

I know I’m too old for it, and it’s 20 years too late, but saying “I told you so” still feels good.—KC

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